


You're Still Very Lovable

by apanoplyofsong



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Jealousy, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7461096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apanoplyofsong/pseuds/apanoplyofsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke accidentally interrupts Bellamy's date. Then it just keeps happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Still Very Lovable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [troubledpancakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubledpancakes/gifts).



> This was inspired by a conversation with [Katelyn](http://nathenmiller.tumblr.com/) and [this](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/post/146961084107/post-break-up-au) prompt list, and because I needed something to get me out of my rut with other projects.  
> It also has more angst than anything I've ever done, so that was an interesting experiment that hopefully works.  
> Title from Bon Iver.

The first time is an accident, honestly.

Clarke walks into the diner and drops immediately onto one of the counter seats. She doesn’t bother to look around. There had been three multi-car pileups on the interstate thanks to the rain and she got to both treat the patients and drive through the traffic created by them, all after yet another fight with her mother. Mascara keeps flecking into her eyes, there are bags the size of Texas stretching halfway down her cheeks, and she can feel the strain of the past few weeks pulling a muscle in the middle of her back tight, tighter, tightest.

The only thing her brain can focus on is the need to ask the waitress for coffee. And maybe pancakes. Definitely some bacon.

She wraps her hands around the steaming mug when it’s set in front of her and basks in the warmth for a moment, feeling it reach through her wrists into her arms and seep from the back of her throat towards her lungs. A breath leaves her. She could marry this cup of coffee, probably. People would definitely understand.

A voice cuts through her internal fog as the hot liquid settles in her stomach and it jars her from her reverie. Clarke turns so quickly that she almost falls off the stool, hand grasping at the counter to catch herself, and it’s him; of course, it’s him. Bellamy Blake sits at a booth in the corner of the diner, small smile playing on the corner of his lips and dark curls messy with the rain.

A bolt of warmth not caused by the coffee shoots through her, followed almost immediately by a cold, empty dread, spiraling through her chest and spreading out into the recesses of her body. He’s here, with someone. At the little diner they always went to because it was warm and cheap and the food was good, because it was close to both her place and his, because their good days and bad days had both happened here.

Clarke tears her eyes away from the long brown hair of the guy sitting across from Bellamy, exactly his type, at the same moment Bellamy looks up and sees her face. She spins around quickly, focus intent on the chipped blue swatches of linoleum making up the countertop, but can still feel him near her a few moments later. Can still smell the cologne he wears when he needs to make a good impression.

“Clarke?” He sounds uncertain, not really sure that this is happening.

Clarke knows the feeling.

“Hey.” She tries for a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh...interrupt.”

Bellamy winces. She wants not to notice the way it makes his freckles move or the fact that his hair is shorter than the last time saw him, wants not to be concerned that the space beneath his eyes looks a little bruised too, but she does. She can’t ask about it now--if he’s sleeping okay, if he finally got that tire on his truck patched up--so she stays silent.

“No, it’s fine.” He studies her for a moment and Clarke concentrates on stirring the spoon around her coffee cup silently. She knows what she looks like: an exhausted, unhappy person. The way people skirt around her at work tells her that, even if she doesn’t know her own details as well as she knows his. “Are you… are you okay?”

His voice is hesitant and, well, she can’t really blame him.

The last time she had seen him, she’d walked out.

“Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p’ for emphasis. “I’m fine. Tired. You know, long day.”

The waitress brings by Clarke’s platter of food and Clarke, grateful for the interruption, pastes on a smile. It feels wrong.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your--date.” She turns towards her pancakes, stabbing one with a fork without looking back at Bellamy. She can feel his eyes on her for a moment longer before his steps fade across the sticky floor.

Her shoulders drop. It wasn’t as bad as she would have expected, really. She probably deserved worse. But something cold still sits in her stomach, something tight clutching at her chest as she picks at the food in front of her, forcing some of it down past the ache in her throat.

She just...didn’t expect Bellamy to be on a _date_. Here, with someone else, only two weeks after they had broken up.

And, yes, they’d only been officially dating for a few months, but they’d known each other for well over a year; built the kind of friendship, the type of connection, she thinks you only get a couple of times in this world and she’d thought--

Well, it doesn’t matter what she’d thought.

When she’s eaten all of her bacon and most of the pancakes, Clarke lets her head sink onto her arm on the counter. Her limbs feel heavy with the day and a sadness she’s not sure she’s earned, and if she has to see Bellamy before she walks out, her body may stop working altogether. Her heart might just decide beating is too much.

So she sits with her forehead pressed against her elbow and accepts another cup of coffee when the waitress walks by. The fog rolls back through her mind. She sits, and waits for what feels like hours, listening to the echo of her heartbeat in her skull, convincing herself it’s still going, telling herself she can binge on wine and those weird mini chocolate cakes in the freezer as soon as she gets home.

Which she’s going to do. Any minute. Once it’s safe to leave.

She’s startled by a tentative touch on her shoulder.

“Clarke?” A hand reaches across her, pushing the plate away. “Clarke, hey.”

Her eyes open to a brown forearm scattered with freckles and she blinks a few times before turning her head.

“Come on,” Bellamy says, “let's get you home.”

“No, no,” she mumbles, scrubbing a hand over her face as she sits up. “You should--you should be with your date. I'm fine.”

He smiles a little, sardonic. “He's gone. You're not okay to drive. Let's go.”

Bellamy tilts his head towards the door and she acquiesces, eyes skimming over the empty booth as she grabs the bag that's thrown over the back of her chair, dropping her keys into his hand when he holds it out after she pays for her meal.

“I would have been okay,” Clarke grumbles halfheartedly when Bellamy starts the car. He raises a brow and looks at her from the corner of his eye, but doesn't say anything. They've had this conversation before.

Except, before, it ended up with him in bed next to her.

It doesn't take long for them to reach her apartment, but she's nodding off against the window nonetheless when they arrive. She stumbles getting out of the car and doesn't miss Bellamy's sharp look, steadying herself as she slings her bag across her shoulder.

“Thank you.” She shuffles her feet for a moment before meeting his eye, voice softer. “Really. Thanks.”

Bellamy nods slowly, watching her for a moment, and his voice is gentle and a little sad when he speaks. “Anytime.” He hands her her keys, fingers brushing her palm briefly, then nods again before stepping back towards the street. A fine mist floats in the air. “I'll see you around Clarke.”

She nods, watching his retreating form for a moment before trudging up her stairs. Clarke falls asleep that night pretending she can't still feel the way his fingers felt against her hand.

 

* * *

 

It's less of an accident the second time.

Clarke’s having lunch with Octavia, complaining that the fumes from her apartment complex being repainted are giving her headaches, when the other girl offers up a solution.

“You should sleep at my place tonight.”

Clarke blinks at her slowly, because, while Octavia may have avoided getting caught in the middle, she definitely knows about Clarke and Bellamy, definitely knows that Clarke sleeping at the apartment the siblings share probably isn’t a great idea. For anyone.

At all.

Octavia waves her hand before Clarke can protest. “I’m sleeping at Lincoln’s tonight and Bellamy has a date, so you probably wouldn’t even have to see him. Just get there after dinner and hang out in my room, it’ll be fine.” She spears a piece of lettuce with her fork. “And, you won’t wake up with a migraine. Problem solved.”

Clarke can feel her spine straighten and her mind whirl; the fact that Bellamy has _another_ date, barely a week after she crashed the last one, spinning around her head like a top. Has he been on dates between the two, as well? Was he even going to come home tonight? _Was he already sleeping with other people?_

A tight flash of panic tears through her at the thought, the idea of it scratching at the back of her mind.

The offer is a terrible idea, objectively.

“Yeah, okay,” Clarke says, taking a sip of her water. “I think I will. Thanks.”

Octavia smiles and moves on.

Clarke doesn’t.

Her lip’s been chewed raw by the time she arrives at the Blake’s apartment that evening, the spare key she still has sliding easily into the lock and letting her in. The space looks the same: air faintly scented with the laundry detergent they use, books splayed across the coffee table, mugs soaking in the kitchen sink. She knows it hasn’t been that long since she’s been here, but it still seems like something should have changed to reflect it all. To match the way it feels like she’s crawling into some past skin.

Clarke lies on Octavia’s bed and lets herself think of Bellamy, of how they fit, of how her life felt with him beside her in the center of it all until her skin starts to itch. The evening passes slowly, Clarke hyperaware of every sound the building around her makes and unable to focus on the book she brought. Her mind keeps tracing lines back to Bellamy, to him with her, to him with other people.

Which is probably the reason she ends up stretched across the sofa in the living room wearing a loose-hanging crop top and her tiny sleep shorts by the time Bellamy and his date arrive at the apartment.

It’s exactly the kind of stupid plan he would have talked her out of, back when Bellamy was the person Clarke went to with every thought or crisis or hope. As it is, there’s only one television in their home, Clarke didn’t bring her laptop, and Netflix seems like a good enough excuse for her presence.

She hears them before she sees them--the click of the lock turning, Bellamy's voice low and easy in a way that still makes Clarke's heart hitch, his date’s sliding into the space above it. There's the familiar clang of the kettle on the stove and Clarke can see the memory of every time Bellamy moved through the kitchen with the rustle of tea boxes on the counter,  the clank of mugs against one another. A woman with sandy brown curls steps into the living room. She tilts her head.

“Hi...Octavia?” The woman seems uncertain, and Clarke probably shouldn't grin at her, but she does.

“No. I'm Clarke. Hi.”

Clarke reaches forward to offer her hand, purposefully heedless of how low her tank hangs over her bra-less breasts.

They're shaking tentatively when Bellamy turns the corner from the kitchen, confusion etched into his expression. His face blanks when he catches sight of Clarke settled into the couch, gaze sweeping over the swell of her chest and the soft flesh of her stomach before his eyes flash hot and he turns on a heel, a hand on her elbow steering his date out of the room.

Soft voices murmur for a moment, a quiet “Sorry, Gina,” rumbling out in Bellamy's bass just before the hinges of the door squeak open and closed. A vindictive slash of satisfaction shoots through Clarke then spirals down, down, down when she hears Bellamy take a deep breath before he walks through the room with his hand in his hair.

Clarke ignores the guilt that unfurls in her chest and focuses on the anger when he won't meet her eye as he heads to bed.

The spaces inside her chest still ache.

 

* * *

 

The third time, she doesn't even pretend.

Clarke walks into her regular bar feeling tired of her own skin. Naturally, that means when she spots Bellamy talking to a lithe brunette at the counter, Clarke plops down on the bar stool next to the other girl’s without preamble. The conversation lulls, but Clarke doesn't bother to do anything other than raise a brow at Bellamy as she waves down the bartender.

She needs a shot.

Bellamy clears his throat and rumbles, “Will you excuse us?” before wrapping a hand around Clarke's arm and tugging her towards the exit. Every nerve ending flares to life under his touch but she huffs anyway, because she probably could have used that tequila for whatever's about to come.

His hand shifts to the dip of her back when they step outside. The evening air is sticky and the sky clings to the last wisps of the sunset’s light, leaving everything dreamlike in its hazy blue glow, Bellamy's palm hot on her skin through the cotton of her shirt.

They turn down the little alleyway between the bar and the neighboring salon where the light from a streetlamp falls across Bellamy’s face in a yellow line before fading into shadow. Clarke doesn’t think about how the brick of the walls felt against her shoulders when Bellamy slid his hand under her skirt here four weeks ago.

Now, instead of mouthing at her pulse, he stares her down, features cut in sharp relief in the dying light.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Clarke shifts her weight, hands coming to her hips as she glares at the ground.

“No, not really. You should go back to your--” She cuts herself off, throat suddenly too dry to continue.

Bellamy huffs, crossing his arms over his chest, and Clarke mirrors the pose instinctively.

“What the hell are you doing, Clarke?”

He sounds as exhausted as he does upset and it tears at her a little bit, that she’s the reason they’re standing here like this. This void of the pavement separating them from each other. But she says nothing, and stares back at him as he waits.

A laugh tears from his throat; a choked, disbelieving sound. “Are you--are you sabotaging my dates?”

Her eyes drop away from his, catching on a spot where glass glitters on the corner of the sidewalk and sliding out of focus.

When he speaks again, he just sounds tired.

“What are you doing, Clarke? Why are you doing this? You said this is what you wanted. For us to see other people.” His voice breaks, a little desperate and a little mad. “I’m just trying to give you what you wanted!”

“I know, okay!” Her eyes snap back to his and she sees his shoulders drop, his arms fall by his sides. “I know it’s my fault that we’re here, that you’re here with--with her, and that I can’t fucking stop thinking about you touching other people the way you touched me, and I _know_ , alright?! I know that I fucked it all up!” Her voice echoes in the alleyway but she barely notices with the way Bellamy’s eyes are burning, with the way he’s stepping in to crowd her space.

“What the hell do you want, then?! Because right now, you don’t have any right to say where I go with anybody. And, if this isn’t what you wanted, then why the hell did you tell me that it was?”

“Because I was scared!” She’s yelling in his face now, and she wilts, voice quieting with her. “I was scared, okay?”

She had forgotten this part of their relationship, that when they first met it was all gasoline and gunpowder, each interaction the chance of a spark. How much potential they had to flame.

Bellamy just waits, his gaze a warm presence on her and she had forgotten this, too. How undemanding his understanding could be. How they always knew when to push and when to hold.

Clarke takes a deep breath, teeth rubbing over the backside of her lip. Something glitters in the dark of the alley and when she turns her head, it’s a hair clip, the end sparkling in the shape of a tiny star. She steels herself and turns back to Bellamy, to the light reflecting in his eyes.

“I got scared. I thought that you--I thought you--” She clears her throat and tries again. “The people who love me; the people that I...it doesn’t end well. And I got scared of that happening to you. I couldn’t have that happen to you.” She blinks back the burning in her eyes at the thought of Lexa, of Finn and Wells and her father and all the people who had been torn from her life by death or chances of fate. The thought of adding Bellamy to that list makes her feel smaller than his anger ever could.

He scrubs a hand across his face. “Clarke...the people who love you aren’t doomed because of it. There are people who love you that show that every day--Raven, and Monty and Octavia and Miller, they never have some _catastrophe_ happen to them just because they love you.”

She whines a little, impatient for him to understand. “Yeah, but that’s not the same--”

“I loved you,” he bursts, “for a _year_ before I ever even _thought_ of kissing you! I never got anything but good from that.”

Clarke looks in his eyes, indignant and imploring all at once, and sees the same look she saw when he sprained his knee and she insisted on driving him to the hospital to make sure nothing was seriously torn. The same look he gave her when she caught the flu a week later.

“Well, it got you here.” She waves a little to the alley behind the puddle of light they’re standing in and offers a small smile. Bellamy snorts and shakes his head.

“We all get scared, Clarke.” His voice is soft, and it tugs at the part of her that bloomed under late night conversations with him, their words always careful not to disturb the dark. “But that doesn’t mean we get to run away.”

She nods, disjointed, and lets out a breath. “I know. I know.” A sardonic smile peeks onto her face as she looks at him. “But I’ve never been very good at knowing what I want.”

There’s a quiet beat. His fingertips brush hers. “Are you getting any better at it?”

“I think so.” Wind dances through her hair and she pushes strands of it away from her face. Clarke lets herself grip his hand when she drops her arm back down, his palm sliding easily along hers as it has so many times before. She feels torn open, the night spilling out through her chest, and from the look on his face, Bellamy seems to feel the same.

His hand squeezes hers, one quick pulse, and it’s enough for her to keep going.

“I don’t want to see other people.” Her voice is small, cocooned in the quiet alley they’ve claimed as their own. “And I don’t really want you to, either, and you’re right, I’m in no place to ask that of you. But, if you can forgive me--it’s you--I do, I do lo--”

His mouth hits hers before she can finish and a choked sound hangs in the air. It’s from her, Clarke knows that, but she and Bellamy are both nodding frantically into the kiss, her hands gripping his wrists where they frame her face, and all she can care about is that he’s solid under her touch, that his lips are a little chapped where they catch hers, that he is warm and sweat-damp and _there_.

When Bellamy pulls away, it’s to rest his forehead against hers, fingers tangling together again and pressed against them both.

“I hated my dates,” he says, wry, and Clarke moves far enough to look at him. “I didn’t want to be there, and I think it was pretty obvious. Felt a little bad about it, actually.”

Her brow furrows. “But the apartment, and here…”

Everything is orange in the streetlights, but his ears flush a little under the glow.

“Gina came back because I started talking about you and she knew I needed a friend. I’m setting her up with Raven, actually. And Echo,” he waves towards the bar behind them, “she’s someone from work. She was asking me about a conference when you got here.”

“Oh.” Clarke’s cheeks heat and she thinks of the ways they’ve suffered in the past weeks, both of them, but not together. She wraps her arms around herself to help the way the thought aches. “God, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done...well, almost everything that I’ve done.”

“Hey.” Bellamy tugs her hand free and wraps it in his own again. “We’ve got some things to talk about. But there’s no reason for us to do it out here, yeah?”

She nods and leans her head against his shoulder, fingers tangling with his, and lets him lead her home.

 

* * *

 

Clarke wakes the next morning just before dawn.

Everything is bathed in the cool blue glow filtering through the window. The fan circles lazily on the ceiling, the hum of the refrigerator just audible through the wall. She feels at peace.

For the first time in a month, her skin fits right. Her heart sits happy with her decisions, its beat no longer a weight but a rhythm. She takes a deep breath and lets it fill her lungs, lets the oxygen pulse through every vein in her body as if she can feel it.

Bellamy’s presence is warm against her back. His legs are twined with hers, one hand resting on the skin of her hip, and she knows if she turned that his face would be pressed into the pillow, freckles stark against the sheets and hair tangled at the ends.

She lets him sleep.

Clarke trails her fingers gently across his thigh, revels in the texture of the hair against his skin, and feels her chest swell at the slight scent of him that clings to the air.

Bellamy shifts against her a moment later. His breath glances off the shell of her ear and an arm wraps around her middle, pulling her tighter against his chest. She leans into him as he presses a kiss to her neck.

It feels surreal, still, that they could be okay. That they could deserve this, somehow. That they are _here_.

His fingers splay across her stomach and she catches them with hers. Their hands intertwine and drift until they rest between her breasts, skin sticky against skin.

Her heart beats steadily under his palm and his answers it against her back.

Together, easy in the comfort of each other, they wait for the day to break.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed (or, well, as much as you can).
> 
> I'm on tumblr with fic/fandom things [here](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/) and more generally [here](http://apanoplyofsong.tumblr.com/)


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